Last weekend I visited Chitwan National Park in Nepal for the second time. When I was there a few years ago I had a brilliant time and one of the highlights was going on safari riding on an elephant. I had been looking forward to doing the same again, but once there I quickly changed my mind.

I’m kind of ashamed to admit that when I was there before I didn’t really think about the impact on the elephant. I didn’t think about it this time either, that is until I had several elephants standing in front of me who were obviously in distress and had their front legs tightly hobbled together.

These were two massive male elephants and our guide explained that they were in musth and therefore for dangerous. I could hardly look at them and didn’t want to take photos as it was so distressing to see these…

One Response to An elephant in chains and pain is terrible sight to behold

24/04/2015: We have just visited Chitwan Park and the treatment of the elephants was terrible in every scenario which we saw them in!

Private elephants near our hotel:
We had three elephants that belonged to our hotel and sadly we witnessed them being hit with bamboo sticks on the trunk and in the face. The young man doing this was laughing and looking at his friends. When we asked the hotel why this was happening they said its reasons like “they are not eating or not behaving”. However from what we could see they are chained up, not able to move doing nothing wrong and been hit for fun by the handlers. From early in a morning we could hear them being hit and crying out or making a sound with their trunks. It is so so sad, looking in their eyes you can tell they feel things and they looked so distressed!

Elephant bathing (seemed the most distressing for the elephants)
Every morning some of the elephants go to the river for bathing, something we thought would be lovely as it’s something elephants enjoy. However this was not what we thought it would be! We thought you would get in the river and help wash the elephants, however iinstead people pay to get on the elephants back have water sprayed on them and be tipped into the water. If you look at the elephants they look so distressed! They are stabbed in the spine with the metal spike to make them drop the people off their back and this is done over and over again! They are also hit with this metal stick! Even when they were being bathed they have the metal stick hung over their ear and they are constantly threatened with it or hit.

Elephant breeding centre.
This is no conservation project where you are going to see elephants happily roaming free! They are chained up and penned in small sections behind electric fences. Some of them look like they are going crazy! They are simply here to be broken down and worked for the sole purpose of tourism! The information centre tells you how the elephants are broken and it is truly horrific.. The thought that the baby elephants we saw will soon be removed from their mothers, starved, beaten and tied up absolutely breaks my heart! Then they will serve a life of misery being assaulted daily and living in fear!!